The Lion Returns
In the book The Life of Pi, Pi Patel, a little Hindu boy goes into a church and asks the priest to tell him a story. The priest tells him the story of Jesus. The next day Pi goes back and asks to hear another story. The priest very wisely tells him Christians have only one story. All the other stories we have are introductory and commentary on that one story.
Christmas is only the beginning of the story. Jesus’ life, death and incredible resurrection is the main body of the story. Today, we are here to remember the one story, the story of the life and death of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and His return.
Jesus is only called a lion once in the Bible, but God is called a lion several times as is the king of Judah. What is more, a prophecy from Jacob says that Judah is a sleeping lion, waiting till the time is right to take the throne forever. Jesus is the fulfillment of all these images.
▸ He is the king
▸ He is God
▸ He is the ultimate child of the tribe of Judah
▸ And He will prove it in the last day when he does things no one else can do
Jesus is the Lion
In the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the whole land waits for the coming of the Lion Aslan. When he comes, the power of evil is broken and the faithful find purpose and meaning in their long resistance to the white which. Winter is over and the king walks among them. All their problems are over.
Or are they?
The disciples certainly thought all their problems were over when Jesus came.
▸ He was the messiah
▸ He was the promised king of the line of David
▸ He was a powerful miracle worker
▸ He successfully faced off with the most powerful people among the Jews
Here was a man who understood people and who had the ear of God. What more could they ask. All their problems were over.
Or were they?
The development of the world’s perception of Jesus during His life
All through Jesus’ life people’s understanding of His identity grew. Nathaniel was the first to recognize Him as king. Others recognized His power early and were constantly amazed at the scope it reached. Then they recognized His authority, not just spiritually and naturally, but socially and politically. Soon they began asking Him questions about His identity. For the most part, I believe people followed Him for the food and the show, some had personal reasons related to their health or that of their loved ones. He began doing illegal things and raising questions about the source of His right to do them. Soon the resident powers started getting annoyed and wanted to discredit Him and plotted to kill Him.
At this time, some began getting a clearer idea of Jesus’ true calling and wanted to make Him king by force. John the Baptist really understood first. From prison, he sent messengers to Jesus to ask Him whether He was the one they were waiting for. Jesus sent back a message quoting Isaiah who had given massive healings as a sign of the coming kingdom.
The Apostles got it next, calling Him the Son of God. They asked Him questions then not about His identity, but about His meanings and methods. Then their questions started aiming toward position, “who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?” Finally, more personal questions arose, “Where do I get to sit? Can I sit next to you?” They had it better, but not quite fully yet.
The apostles finally started understanding the magnitude of what Jesus had come to do. They already knew He was a king, They now accepted the implications of His relationship with Scriptural prophecy. He was the Messiah, the coming king. And they already knew He was the Son of God, this was going to be absolutely Huge!
As Jesus’ death approached, people at large finally began taking in all the Jesus had been saying about the Kingdom of God. They began understanding that in the Kingdom of God, Jesus was the King. When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem before the Passover, they hailed Him as King, to the great upset of the Pharisees. Jesus didn’t take the city by storm and the Apostles, who thought they understood what was going on, began asking how to recognize the coming of Jesus’ coronation.
Then things started getting confusing. Jesus gave them signs that applied to times that were much more terrible than the times they lived in. Finally, at the Last Supper, Jesus reveals Himself completely as one who is a servant about to be killed. They Apostles are astounded and confused for hours while Jesus explains the way His kingdom will work, through the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Of course in the next few hours, everything fell apart. Jesus was arrested. The apostles tried to resist with force, but Jesus stopped them. He was taken and they were scattered. The Kingdom that was so promising over the past few years had been destroyed in a few minutes.
Imagine going to college for three years in a four year program. At the end of the three years the school is closed down for financial and academic abuses. All accreditation is pulled and you begin understanding that you will not be able to graduate. Not only that, because of the heavy abuse of the school your credits will not be transferred to other schools. The whole thing was a scam and you will not get your money back.
All the work you have put into training has been for nothing. You have wasted thousands of dollars, three years of your life, immeasurable effort, and all your hope for your future and that of your family. You now find that you have to start all over again, either at a new school or at a new job or something. You probably have to move and all this is because something you believed in and invested yourself in has fallen through.
For the Apostles it was ten times worse. They had believed not simply in their nation’s salvation or their political salvation, they had believed in the fulfillment of scripture and their own personal salvation. Jesus had let down
▸ these men
▸ their nation
▸ their families
▸ their synagogues
everything they stood for and believed in.
After Aslan made his private agreement with the White Witch, he had counsel with Peter to give him strategies for battle no matter how the witch proceeded the next day. All of this was very confusing to Peter who felt very ill equipped to lead a battle ... for good reason, he was after all, only a boy. Aslan gives him advice on placement of troops and Peter protests
“But you’ll be there yourself, Aslan.”
“I can give you no promise of that,” answered the Lion. And he continued giving Peter his instructions.
Susan and Lucy spent time with him that day and he seemed very sad. All the children were very confused about what was going on in his mind.
I expect it was much like this for the apostles on the night of the Last Supper. They kept asking Jesus questions and He kept answering them, but the answers were somewhat less than satisfying. The Apostles’ inability to understand that Jesus had to die is legendary.
But all of us stand confused by God at times. He persistently refuses to be boxed in by our limited thinking. He puts us in situations that we never would have chosen for ourselves, because not only does He know our true potential, but He knows that we tend to forget that He is part of the equation in solving problems that arise.
When I was a child, my family was not allowed to bring our African American friends who came to Christ to our church. Why would God allow a church to indulge in racism? So that some could discover their need to launch a church that would be accepting of all races and see people come to Christ.
Whey would God then allow that church to wain and dwindle to nothing despite the efforts of its few members. As one man said, maybe the work that church was placed to accomplish has been done.
I would not have arranged things that way, and I suspect you would not either. You would not enjoy being a part of such an endeavor at its inception because of the wrong involved at the first church. You would not want to be at the second church at the end because of the pain involved in closing.
God does not do thing the way we do and we cannot be expected always to understand.
▸ So Aslan allows the Lucy and Susan to accompany him to the clearing where the stone table sits
▸ He allows the evil creatures led by the white witch to bind and shave him
▸ He endures their taunts and her insults and contempt
▸ He lays quietly while she drives the stone knife into his heart and kills him in the place of Edmund
This is the heart of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. If you miss this, you have missed the entire point of not just this book but the whole series and C.S. Lewis’ life work. Aslan’s self sacrifice to save Edmund from the evil witch is emblematic of Jesus’ death.
▸ He allowed Judas to betray him
▸ He allowed the temple guards to take him in Gethsemane
▸ He endured the beatings and the taunts of the Sanhedrin and their false witnesses
▸ He took the scourging and the false accusations before Pilate
▸ He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross and to shed his blood and to die of slow asphyxiation to take the punishment for your sin and mine
No wonder the apostles were confused. How could the death of the one who came to be king be helpful? How could He plan to rule while he was dying? Of course, if they had only understood what He had been telling them it would have made sense, but He was saying things that did not add up and things they did not want to believe. No wonder they were confused.
But Jesus had been preaching for three years, trying to explain the essence of the Kingdom of Heaven. He had been trying to tell people that it
▸ was internal
▸ was not all it seemed to be
▸ was bigger than it should have been
▸ was fraught with danger and problems
▸ involved backward values
▸ would require total commitment
Now Jesus, the king of the Kingdom of Heaven was cementing its foundation with His own blood and dying to ensure the life of all who believed in Him.
That is the Kingdom of God.
▸ Jesus is the cornerstone
▸ Every person who comes to Him, starting with the Apostles adds to the structure of the Kingdom
▸ His blood provides forgiveness for all who want citizenship
▸ His forgiveness removes all barriers between people and God
▸ His death is a sad and gruesome part of the story, but it is necessary.
▸ He was nailed to a wooden cross
▸ He hung by his wrists and feet for three hours losing blood
▸ He suffered from exhaustion and the heat of the mid day sun
▸ He died around three in the afternoon and hung for three more hours
▸ A spear was thrust into His side to prove he was dead
▸ He was taken down and laid by friends into a cold damp cave for burial
▸ He lay in that cave from Friday night till Sunday morning
Then he came back to life.
His death was a sacrifice, He substituted Himself for us so that our sin would be atoned, but we would not have to endure the payment ourselves. That event, the death and resurrection of Jesus, is the hallmark of our faith. Jesus did not submit to death only to be ultimately defeated. God gave his life back. If his death saved from judgement, His resurrection gives eternal life.
This too is part of the Narnia story.
Susan and Lucy are overwhelmed by sadness at the death of Aslan, but while their backs are turned, the table upon which he was killed breaks in half and the lion lives and walks, whole and vital once again. The girls then experience the fulness of what it means to have Aslan as a friend.
They need renewal and reassurance, so he takes the time to play with them
I think that is an image of Jesus’ acknowledgment of what we need. The Apostles had a hard time believing that Jesus was raised from the dead. So He
▸ sat with them
▸ talked with them
▸ let them touch him
▸ ate with them
The death of the King is important to our salvation, but His resurrection is also crucial.
But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
1 Corinthians 15:12-20 (NIV)
▸ In His death He satisfied the need for righteousness
▸ In His resurrection He demonstrated the victory of life over death
▸ The King died
▸ But the King returned
▸ We do not serve a dead Lord, we serve a risen lord
▸ We do not serve a Messiah who was defeated by His enemies and by death
▸ We serve a Messiah who defeated death itself for us
▸ He did not just die
▸ He came back from death
That is why, ultimately, though our salvation is in the physical death of our God, our faith is a belief of hope. His resurrection allows us not only to have hope because He is alive, but to have hope that we to shall live forever with Him. He did not leave us at the tomb, blocked by a stone. He removed the stone and invited us in to have a look and see
He is not there
He is risen as he said
The King has returned.
